In Cannes it's time for strong women

He removed velvets, long beard, sixteenth-century frills from King Henry VIII, no longer pingue as in the film but appeared on the red carpet of Cannes with an unprecedented mustache Jude Law, one of the stars of the sixth day of the festival.
With him the protagonist Alicia Vikander (on the red carpet with her husband Michael Fassbender) who plays Catherine Parr, queen consort of England and Ireland, from 1543 to 1547 sixth and last wife of Henry VIII Tudor. She is another figure of a determined, courageous and not at all succubus woman of which this 2023 selection is particularly and perhaps not by chance rich, given the record of seven female directors in competition and a general openness of gaze in the desire to tell the female complexity.
One of the two films of the day is Firebrand by Brazilian Karim Ainouz, the story of the relationship between the English king and his queen sympathetic to religious reform and therefore at risk of his life as a heretic in the bloody Tudor court in the sixteenth century. A beautiful drama in costume, now in competition, soon in Italian cinemas by Vertice 360.
The second is Anatomie d'un chute, anatomy of a fall, by French director Justine Triet, a tense story of a family cold case involving a musician, his writer wife and their visually impaired teenage son after an accident. The man is found dead in the chalet in the French Alps where the family has moved, the police investigate because it does not seem an accident. The magnetic interpretation of Sandra Huller, who is also 'the queen of Auschwitz' in Jonathan Glazer's The Zone of Interest, makes the German actress a super candidate for the palmares.
On the red carpet parade among others also by her husband Jean Todt Michelle Yeoh, Oscar winner this year to whom Kering has awarded the Women in Motion and a magnificent Marion Cotillard for Little Blue Girl by Mona Achache, the director Lukas Dhont.
Other strong women on the bill are Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore, the two stars of Todd Haynes' May December.
"The full range of human behavior should be accessible to women because women are simply human beings," Portman said. In the film she is an actress who wants to get to know the woman she has to play in the next film: Gracie (Moore), who 23 years earlier had been condemned by her community for a relationship with a 13-year-old child having twice as much, hence the title May December which means precisely relationship between a young person and an older one. The scandalous couple is still together and the arrival of the Hollywood actress makes them come to terms with the taboo that has conditioned their lives, while the ambiguous behavior of the woman adds tension to the melodrama. "I think there's no limit to how much can be explored, so I'd like to see more and more," Portman said.
After the triumph in the hall last night, with record applause for Killers of the Flower Moon, the epic and police drama today the meeting with the press by Martin Scorsese. The great acclaimed 80-year-old filmmaker, alongside the faithful Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro embraces with affection Lily Gladstone, the soul of this film, a 39-year-old actress who offers a special performance since she herself belongs to the tribe of Blackfeet and Perforated Noses, and is moved to tears to see represented "the tragedy of my people". In theThe detective epic based on the novel by David Grann, Scorsese explores what happened in Oklahoma in the '20s in the land of the Osage, when oil was discovered under the Great Prairies and in the Native American community suddenly became very rich, the whites wanted to take this immense wealth. For William Hale, the white sheriff played by Bob De Niro, in whose web also falls his simpleton nephew, Leonardo DiCaprio, who would sincerely love his rich squaw Mollie, De Niro was inspired by former US President Donald Trump, called "a stupid man". De Niro - William Hale is loved by indigenous people unaware of what he is doing against them. "Part of him is sincere. The other side, the one in which he betrays the tribes - said the 79-year-old legendary actor new father - has an arrogant attitude, as if he had the right to do so as a white. "The fact is that we have become much more aware of this ambivalence after what happened to George Floyd - he said - we live with systemic racism". De Niro spoke of the film as something that addresses "the banality of evil, the thing we have to pay attention to more than any other," while DiCaprio called Scorsese "the most unique director of our time: he continues to have tremendous energy in making these films with stories not to be forgotten."